[governance] Re: What is Network Neutrality

[McTim]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
>>Google offers a definition that I think we can adopt in our work going
>> forward:
>
>>"Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in
>>control of what content they view and what applications they use on
>>the Internet."

To be clear, this definition came from a different page:

http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html

>
>>This definition doesn't open the can of worms (what is ok and what is
>> not), as Google does here:
>
>
> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-do-we-mean-by-net-neutrality.html
>
> McTim
>
> The same Google policy blog, in defining NN, also says under,
>
> "What isnt Ok" - "Building a new "fast lane" online that consigns Internet
> content and applications to a relatively slow, bandwidth-starved portion of
> the broadband connection."
>
> That is the only point I have been trying to argue over all these days, and
> have in all obscuring ways been accused of obscurity.  Now since you are
> unlikely to say that even Google is confused

not confused, just focused on one issue, just as torrent folks are
focused on their issue.  We shouldn't focus on single issues, we have
bigger fish to fry.

, and you have professed
> eagerness to adopt Google's definition of NN, can you *specifically answer*
> if you think that the above, as Google says, is *not* Ok, and a violation of
> NN.

I don't know what it means, as its a bit vague, so really can't answer
that for all cases.

Google seems to mean that termination monopoly pricing is not ok, I
agree with them.  Google pays once for their bandwidth, they shouldn't
have to pay again because the people who run the "dumb pipes" are
annoyed because they think Google gets a free ride.

However, prioritizing packets is ok, in some cases.  The devil is in
the details.
The Internets success is due to its decentralized and mostly neutral nature.
We shouldn't advocate that it is completely neutral as it has never
actually been neutral.  File transfers normally get priority, for
example.

Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, said it well: "I most
definitely do not want the Internet to become like television where
there's actual censorship... however it is very difficult to actually
create network neutrality laws which don't result in an absurdity like
making it so that ISPs can't drop spam or stop... (hacker) attacks."

>
> That is all we need, in order to move forward on this. We can just pull this
> line into our assertion of what we think is NN as an objective of our
> advocacy efforts.

This is just one aspect of what folk have been going on about re: NN.
We shouldn't just focus on this one narrow part of the issue, we
should be speaking out about censorship by governments, rights and
responsibilities of users, as well as about what we think providers
can and cannot do.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
http://stateoftheinternetin.ug
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